Busy as a Bee

Nile riverside villages, a set on Flickr.

There's a new Facebook group, Ibischild, started by yours truly, the author of this blog. It's an open group, so you all are welcome to visit, and to join if you wish. The group is a chance for us to share information about Egypt, past and present.

Right now, if you visit the site and page down a little, you'll find info about beekeeping in ancient Egypt, and about the ancient tomb of Pabasa. A useful little discussion and exchange of info.

Well, I had no clue that starting a group on FB was so much work. I've been spending hours and hours on the internet. But we'll have fun, and find more cool links and sites than we can possibly keep up with in one lifetime! And meet new FB people, of course!

Then, yesterday, thanks to a link on the Ibischild group, I ended up spending an hour or two on Flickr.com, getting eyestrain looking at wonderful photos of ancient Egyptian artefacts and modern Egyptian life.

This is the other thing that's taking a lot of my time: uploading and organizing my photos on Flickr.com. My photo archive is still very much a work in progress. But you're welcome to visit my research library of photos--under the name ibischild, naturally.

Meanwhile, there's the second revision of my book. I'm picking up my new laser printer this afternoon, inch'Allah. So then I can do a printout of the first revision and of the work I've done since then. After a long hiatus, I should see the book with fresh eyes.

[For writer friends:  How to Deal With Revision Fatigue | Nathan Bransford, Author] 

I just corrected my previous blog post, by the way. Tahrir means liberation, not  revolution. Oops!

Some levity

Here's the latest from Rachelle, with a great cartoon:

Rachelle Gardner | Literary Agent

And here's a rolling-on-the-floor video clip from a British comedy (with thanks to Julie Daines, via Rachelle's blog):

Ok... Not This... - YouTube

Just hoping to brighten the day of writers, readers, & other human beings!
(I need light relief myself, after trying & failing to alter color and underlining on these links!)

Crisis: Gateway of Opportunity

Gateway at Dendera temple (photo by author)

Remember Victorian novels? There's the severe fever, and then the terrible midnight moment when the doctor says, "This is the crisis." And you know that the outcome of this moment will be life or death.

I'm in a crisis! Because my book revision has reached the crisis (or climax). The terrible confrontation, the moment of truth and shame. Where my hero protagonist acts despicably.

Precisely, my challenge is writing the unwinding or unraveling after the crisis. The denouement, we called this, in English class.

For my character, this unraveling could lead to madness or death—already his constant fears. Will the outcome be negative or positive? [Clue: title of this blog post!]

My protagonist represses his feelings, but now he's up against a wall. Under pressure, he must express some interior activity. But how much, and where?

Then there's the sequence and number of  confrontations/conversations after the crisis point. I need to delineate damaged relationships and their slow healing (to the extent that they do heal). As I reread my draft, I realize that the relationships heal  too quickly and effortlessly.

I've started a blank page for reworking this material. I'll throw up a skeleton of events, and then see which thoughts and feelings weave themselves into this skeleton as a kind of connective tissue, and which are unnecessary or uncharacteristic or should remain unexpressed.

The first 8500 words of revision of part 3 went pretty smoothly. And now—aargh! But if I nail this section, it's my opportunity to make the book shine!

Gloating

I'm so happy.

Yesterday, I finished first revision of part one. (My novel has 3 parts.) I guess I never really believed it would get done.

I'm close to the tentative schedule I'd set a month or two ago: to finish first revision by the end of this year. Part one took  almost 5 weeks, starting Oct. 1. So I'm about a week behind. At this rate I'll be done with this revision early next year, which isn't too bad. Rushing is counter-productive.

In the dim and distant past, when I presented early chapters (early in two senses) to my writers' group in Texas, there was some feeling, very polite, that things were a little disjointed and hard to follow.

Part of this disjointedness came from presentation one chapter at a time, with two or more weeks intervening between chapters. I told myself that this was entirely the problem. After all, I knew exactly what was happening in my novel and where it was going.

But now that I've finished this round of revision, I can see what they were saying. I've run into all kinds of disjointedness all over the place. That's a lot of what I've been fixing, on this run-through.

I feel like a mechanic. Get this fixed, then get that fixed.

I feel like a visionary. Seeing what isn't there, but is there somewhere in another universe. Gaps that need to be filled, and the material that needs to fill them. A physicist, perhaps, on the hunt for that elusive dark matter.

I feel like a sewage specialist. Getting rid of you-know-what. It's such a good feeling to get rid of  over-written text that doesn't really say anything, or needlessly repeats stuff that's already been said.

Along the same lines, I feel like a butcher, excising tripe. Except that the butcher sells his tripe, whereas my tripe goes in the trash. (Well, it still exists in the heaven of earlier versions which are saved on my computer.)

Meanwhile, I should work on a blog post on Abydos. I finally went on Saturday. A useful visit.

But I'd rather gloat over having struggled through the flotsam and jetsam of my first draft (part one, that is), swimming to the shore of a version that is tight and has momentum. And then, sometime next year, I'll discover it's just a sandbank, and that I won't reach land until I've done more revision.

Onward and upward! The first chapter of part 2 is "on deck" (a baseball term, for Brits and others who don't know what that is--a team member who's ready to come up to bat next is "on deck".) In other words, it's minimized at the bottom of my computer screen.

The Impossible Dream? Yes!

The movie August Rush was just on TV. As usual with movies on TV, I missed a huge chunk at the beginning.

I tuned at the point where a committee is informing August that his musical work is going to be performed. And I heard the following exchange [as well as I can remember it]:

How many people will hear it? Hundreds?

No…thousands.

Good. Because I need for lots of people to hear it.

Isn't this is what creativity is all about? Sharing our work with an audience.

We self-deprecatingly say that we don't care whether anyone reads our work (or hears our music, or whatever.) Some of us say this, anyway. I can't honestly say it.

It's not true. It shouldn't be true.

If it is true, we aren't making art, or attempting to make art. We're engaged in a narcissistic exercise, or a hobby. Or we're overcome by fear. The fear of looking like a fool.

And because it isn't a narcissistic exercise—and because we don't want to look like a fool—we work and work to make it as good as we can possibly make it. For our own satisfaction, yes. But for the sake of the work itself. Because it's not worth doing if it's not worth doing well. Because we want to enrich people's lives and challenge their thinking with our art.

The impossible dream? Yes.

Tilting at windmills? That's the insanity of art.

Isn't this what movies—and novels—are all about? (The good ones, anyway.) Reaching for the moon, grasping at your dream. And maybe even catching it.

Speaking of the impossible dream, here's a post from the query-letter trenches, On Hope. This post is from Natalie Whipple (and I found it via NathanBransford's blog).

By the way, I don't know how many of you look at labels. Those categories that Blosgspot lets us create for our posts. Well, as you see, I tagged this post Writer's Diary and Writing Life (yawn) and also Love. Because we love our audience and we love our work (on good days) and we love our characters even when nobody else does. And this is why we do it.

Settling in--Revision

Since the beginning of this month, I've been revising systematically, starting at page one of my m.s. And so far I've done a pretty decent revision of 50 pages. At this rate, I hope to have completed a satisfactory first revision by the end of the year.

I hate to tell you all this, because next week I might hit a road block. OK, writer's block. Except that I really don't believe in writer's block. (I might explain in a later post.)

So what was I doing before, you ask? Agonizing about the fact that I wasn't producing any visible revision work, other than a few new chapters.

There are reasons for this apparent inertia. I was getting settled into my new environments. (I've moved three times since coming to Egypt in November.) And I was getting some distance from my m.s.. And my subconscious mind was sifting through the whole m.s. in a miraculous way.

So that now I'm able to be objective about things. See where the order of elements (chapters, paragraphs, etc.) needs to be changed. See what needs to be eliminated. Most amazing of all, I'm seeing gaps. More precisely, I'm seeing the new material that needs to fill the gaps.

OK. So I can't promise to put up regular blog posts.

Because this creative process takes vast amounts of focus and mental energy. As does blogging. And one of the two has to get priority.

Does anyone out there have experience revising any work of art? Any pearls of wisdom?

By  the way, here's a little something from the Barnes & Noble (online) Review.  Effortless-seeming thumbnail sketches of prizewinning books. 44 Bookers in 25 Words (Each) - The Barnes & Noble Review

Nathan Bransford, Author: What Is the Most Important Quality for a Writer?

I just have to share this discussion from Nathan's awesome blog!

Nathan Bransford, Author: What Is the Most Important Quality for a Writer?

Writer's Occasional Diary--Cooking

Well, part of the impetus for the "Exposure" post (June 16, 2011) was the fact that I hadn't been revising. Or at least, not producing any written product. And this inactivity made me feel like a fraud, calling myself a writer.

But since last week, revision has been cooking nicely.

I've got a new chapter to replace my most problematic chapters. One chapter instead of three or four. What was a plodding narrative is now a brief tale of a friendship.

And today I woke up with a brand new chapter in mind. For the sliver of crescent moon, like a fingernail shaving, which I've been puzzling over for weeks. And now the crescent moon has its own little 230-word chapter.

So now I'm not a fraud. I'm a writer again. And all's right with the world. Even what's wrong with my world isn't so bad, really. Because I'm writing again.

A little green lizard—a baby—showed up this morning to help me with my chapter. A real live lizard, I mean. Really. In my living room.

This lizard wasn't a gecko. It was a dark green lizard with a pale green stripe. It's gone now. But it's a good segue to my next post, about geckos.

Exposure--WOD*

*WOD=Writer's Occasional Diary

I was feeling so pleased yesterday. Into a new (revised) chapter—a brand new start in medies res. I'd done some research and made a decision. And I'd typed up a quick blog post.

And then it came. The crash. The rest of the day I was good for nothing and very grumpy.

Well, I'm used to this. It's just me living my life.

But, yesterday, I could identify a specific reason: Exposure.

What is exposure? You feel:

1. Naked
2. Stupid

Here I was blogging about my writing process as if anyone's really interested, when I'm not even published. And blogging about my new chapter, which might stay unfinished for too long.

And everyone will think I'm just a fraud.

Welcome to life as a writer!

Well-trained writers know that you can be a bona fide writer even if you've never been published. But you can't always make yourself feel like a real writer, especially if you're cut off from a writing community. [I'm sure there must be some writers here in Luxor. I'll find them, one of these days.]

And it's stressful putting yourself out there on public display. Unless you're Snookie or one of the Kardashians, I guess.

Helen, a college roommate of mine, did some research on a Russian poet called Tyutchev. He burned a vast number of his poems. Too revealing. And we all know that novels also expose the author's guts to the whole world.

Well, the blog is good exposure practice. Because, in theory, exposure is a good thing. We want exposure. We want to be published. And do author appearances, and interviews, and all that stuff.

It's all terrifying. It's all stressful. And it's all part of being a writer.

Writer's Occasional Diary

Two days ago I wrote the first paragraph of a new chapter. And then broke it into two paragraphs. And then stopped.

This is a new old chapter. I'm doing revision, remember. This chapter should condense material found in several old chapters, making it much more palatable. It's a departure from chronology, which can start to plod. It's more in the style of reminiscence, which tells anecdotes of the most interesting points.

The paragraph begins with my protagonist and his new friend, Tesfaye, leaving the port. And we're going to backtrack to how they met, etc. Things have been coming together nicely in my mind.

And last night I realized I have to do research on Djibouti. And this morning I also researched Massawa. Because I have to decide which port it was. Specifically, Adulis (down the coast from modern Massawa) or Tadjoura (more sheltered than modern Djibouti port, and supplied by a prolific spring of fresh water.)

In the dim and distant past, I had pretty well decided on the Eritrean port, Adulis. But now my mind was assuming Tadjoura/Djibouti. This would be the port of ancient Punt. A commercial hub in ancient times as now, because of its geography. Controlling access to the Bab el Mandeb, the strait between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

Tesfaye comes from the Ethiopian highlands near Lake Tana. The source of the Blue Nile, the "small river", flows into Lake Tana, and the Blue Nile, the "big river", flows out of Lake Tana.

Tesfaye's journey to the coast is a grueling trek, whichever route he chooses. He must climb to the highest levels of the mountains. It is from here that the rivers start to flow down towards the coast.

Somehow I'd been thinking that the Eritrean coast was the easier destination. Now that I've had another look at the maps, I wonder why I thought this. Djibouti is a straight shot eastward. The Eritrean port is northeast.

I also seem to remember that there is a gap in the mountains on the eastward route. Not a depression, if I remember rightly, just a slightly lower elevation. (These are very high mountains—higher than the Rockies, I think, or at least as high.) On topographical maps, the mountains to the northeast look like more of a barrier on a route towards the coast.

What's more, some of the Afar people migrated from the region of Lake Tana to Djibouti in ancient times. An indication that it's a logical route.

I also studied the weather. My protagonist and Tesfaye are stuck in the port for months, waiting for the winds and currents to turn for the voyage north. They are stuck there in summer, when it's hot and humid and our old friend the khamsin wind blows strongly from the inland desert. It's good to set out to sea again after this, in spite of a grim outlook for each man.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Rachelle's blog has become a sort of home-away-from-home for me. A virtual writers' community.

I just threw up a comment on her post:Are We Having Fun Yet?. And then I thought I'd like to copy it onto my blog. But I did things the hard way. I hadn't composed the comment in Word first. So now I had to type it, word for word, into a Word file for posting here. Here it is, warts & all, just raw data--but hopefully without typos.

Writing is the most rewarding thing I can do, and the most challenging. An activity that I'm gifted for, but the most difficult and frustrating and exasperating. And a huge learning curve.

The best part is when something reveals itself that you didn't know. Maybe from research, maybe just from the logic of the characters and their lives. It's fun living in this other world. It's an antidote for depression (not a cure)—having an interesting world to go to as a refuge when your own life seems so drab.

And the really best part is when it flows. And the worst part is when you're stuck—because your life is stuck, or because your story needs percolation time.

And the really worst part (as someone mentioned) is rereading a chapter and thinking that it's all a boring load of garbage. And then you have to ask yourself: Is this me having a bad day? Is this me being insecure? Or is this really not the best or most accurate piece of writing I've ever done.

Enough already. Thanks, Rachelle.

June 4, 2011  6:23 AM (U.S. Eastern Time, I think)

When the going gets tough...

Here I am, recovering from the loss of my beloved Apple computer (hopefully only a temporary loss.) Now the owner of a reconditioned PC. Freed from slogging down to the internet cafe. Happy to be reunited with all my cyberspace friends, and happy to be reunited with my blog, which I've started to enjoy.

I thought I'd share a blog post from Rachelle today. It seems relevant to my current situation--and maybe to yours as well.

Revision Woes II--all dressed up and nowhere to go

I've got all these great ideas for fixing trouble spots in my WIP (work in progress). Instead of just rewriting rocky patches, incorporating the material in other ways. "Oh, by the way" paragraphs/chapters, and so on.

And here I am without a computer, so I can't do any of it. Unless I do it the old fashioned way--pen and paper!

At least, now, I want to get started on revision very very badly!

My work is backed up online and on thumb drive, and I have a printout of the whole thing packed away with my books. Also, I have the first 45 pages with me.

But I'll believe that the back-ups have worked when I see them on my computer, one way or another. A doubting Thomas!

Worst case scenario: I have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch--apart from the first 45 pages.

But this is how some writers revise, in any case. A bit scary. The scariest part: reconciling version one and version 2. Not a problem if version 1 is lost in cyberspace!

And sometimes the blank slate is the best route to a lean and mean manuscript.
Richard Dana's (2 Years Before the Mast) sea trunk was lost, with his extensive notes and various specimens. All he had to work from was his small journal--a log, really--and his memory. And the book was probably better because of it. [I've just finished reading this book on my e-reader, and it's a surprisingly good read. Less verbose than Moby Dick, at least.]

Gentle blog reader, you'll be happy to hear that I've finished venting my angst!

Kingfishers and Hoopoes

Dateline: Saturday, April 16th--post delayed by technical difficulties.

This morning I was visiting an apartment on the west bank. Directly across the river from the city of Luxor, that is.

As we sat drinking tea, on the balcony overlooking a banana plantation, I saw a large-ish bird fly into a small tree—perhaps a fruit tree. It was a brownish-looking bird and its wingspan had striking dark stripes. At first I thought it might be a small bird of prey. But then I saw its mate walking on the path nearby. I was watching a pair of hoopoes—although the first bird was now invisible among the leaves of the tree.

This is part of the reason why I want to live on the west bank. To be close to nature, and especially to see and hear the birds.

On our way back to the ferry, we were driving alongside a small canal. Wires were strung across the canal at intervals. Once, and again, and again. On each set of wires—well, on only one wire in each instance, to be precise--sat a kingfisher, surveying its domain or keeping an eye out for dinner or both.

The kingfishers here are like nothing you’ve seen, I’m guessing. They’re pied kingfishers. Entirely black and white, in a stunning configuration. To see them in flight is remarkable. The zebras of the bird kingdom, I guess.

I was wishing I could see the kingfishers in flight again, as I did when I was visiting Egypt last spring.

And now, this evening, I have in my mind an image. The beginning of a chapter. An “oh, by the way” chapter. (More about “oh, by the way” chapters later, perhaps.)

A kingfisher dives towards the river, catching a meal. A crocodile leaps out of the river and catches the kingfisher for dinner.

This is all you need to know about the new chapter for now. Especially because I haven’t written it yet. You see, this evening I faced a dilemma. Should I start the chapter first? Or should I start the blog entry first? As you see, the blog won.

Oh, and here's your free bonus for reading this post. For those of you who believe crocodiles can't jump--and for the amazement everyone else as well--we present this video.

Revision woes

[Well, my post about revision is lost in cyberspace. So now I’m typing in Word (trying to get into that habit, rather than typing directly into the blog), making an effort to remember the post while it’s still fresh in my mind.]

While I was away, I actually dipped a toe tip into revision.

Revision is terrifying. Even more scary than writing the first draft. At least, it seems that way now.

After all, everyone tells you the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. “Don’t worry about getting it perfect. Just get it written down on paper.”

But not so with revision, where the goal is perfection.

So I tell myself that, even in revision, perfection isn’t achieved all at once. It comes in stages, each stage nearer the unreachable goal of perfection.

There’s always more research that can be done, for one thing.

I think I need to immerse myself more in the ancient literature, for example.

Also, there are sites that I need to visit. (Real sites, not websites!) I need to ride down to Dendera temple on the river, for example. And I have to get myself back to the beautiful sites right here around Luxor.

And it’s an inspiration just to look inside a “picture book” and browse through pictures of anything ancient Egyptian. But I can’t do that while my books are in storage.

I think I need to do a few funky things with chronology, here and there. Insert a couple of chapters that don’t fit neatly into a single time slot. (More about these “oh, by the way” chapters later, perhaps.)

Then there are the camel skeletons (see my March post.) All those bits and pieces which didn’t find a home in the first draft. They need to go in somewhere, but you’re not sure where. They’re flying and fluttering inside and around your head like a flock of bats, or like the playing cards at the end of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Revision has so many bits and pieces involved. Nothing like working more or less straight through the first draft. (Although doing a printout and working through is probably the next step.)

I tell myself it’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Bit by bit, with time and perseverance, the pieces will fit together somehow, even if some of them have to go in unlikely places. And the pieces that don’t fit, at the very end? Well, they probably belong in a totally different puzzle.

No more time to revise this post—although I might revisit it later. I want to move on to some posts about getting back to Egypt.

A Devoted Reader--Two Quarters' Worth

A sweet little true story from Elaine, commenting on Rachelle's blog:

In my Bible, page 976, scripted in ink beside the verse “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12) are these words: “Writing rejected 2/07.”

I think that particular rejection was the worst I’ve known as it pertains to my writing. A publisher held onto my manuscript for six months before declining.

I remember closing my door and sobbing my gutteral ache. Moments later, I see tender hands reaching beneath the crack at the base of the doorway and my little son saying, “Mommy, here’s two quarters. I’ll buy your book.”

Thanks, Elaine & Elaine's son.